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Dance team welcomes new members, grows on hilltop

West Liberty offers many extracurriculars for their students to get involved with on campus. From Biology club to gaming club, these organizations help bring students together and further the family orientation of our campus. One club in particular that is taking off this year is West Liberty’s own dance team.

The mission statement of this club is to, “uphold the pride of the university by encouraging positive school spirit and to contribute to the improvement of students who dance through performances, appearances, volunteer activities, and competitions.” They are certainly doing just that.

Started in 2006 by Kayla Costlow, the dance team was an organization created by students who saw a need and chose to take matters into their own hands.

Performing at football games, basketball games and competitions, the West Liberty dance team won many awards for their amazing talent.

After a few years, however, the dance team faced some hardships as there was a transition of coaches, eventually leaving the team with no coach at all.

Last year, the team was entirely student ran with a council that included a President, Vice President and Secretary to give the team some structure. After some dedication and rebuilding, the dance team now has a new coach, Courtney Taylor, who is also the head cheerleading coach.

They have gone from 12 girls, to four, and now back to eight this year and hope that their number will continue to grow.

President Meredith Garner has high hopes and dreams of rebuilding the dance team, as well as its reputation as a whole.

“I’d just like to say that I’m really glad I was presented the opportunity to be able to kind of pick up and mold the dance team into what it is now,” said Garner. “I know that if I wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take over the team and I didn’t take it last year, we might not have a dance team right now. It’s really humbling to see the team now with the increase of girls, new uniforms, a new coach and being able to perform at half time. It’s really exciting to see all that hard work get paid off and hopefully in the future we can compete nationally.”

Garner also mentioned that the dance team is open to all genders. If you have the talent, skill and passion, everyone is welcome to try out.